


The Adventure of the Devil, Footless

by gardnerhill



Category: Basil of Baker Street - All Media Types, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic, Story: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Anticipation” doesn’t always have a pleasant connotation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the Devil, Footless

**Author's Note:**

> For the June 2016 Watson's Woes Monthly Prompt, “anticipation.”

My friend Basil of Baker Street and I have endured long nights (several memorable all-night sessions indeed), but none as gut-churningly full of dread as in one particular case.

Murders on a country estate, many of them, and the disappearances of the bodies confirmed Basil’s theory. Honest country mice had fallen victim to a wickedness so great that it had even felled a human woman. I agreed with Basil about the possible identity of the culprit even as I shuddered at what we could anticipate that night.

We found a niche in the grating between the humans’ bedrooms, just above the red velvet bell-pull attached to no bell.

And we waited.

I leave it to my readers to imagine the mingled sensations of horror, dread, anticipation and mind-numbing ennui all at the same time. Hours spent in a pitch-black room, not twitching a tail-hair, yet so terrified every second of that time that it was a wonder Basil and I couldn’t hear each other’s pounding hearts. It was madness, what Basil had proposed we do. But since he would not listen to reason and sensibly stay away and safe, nor would I.

The hiss of the lamp being lit in the human squire’s room jolted us from paralysis. Then the hissing sound of the approaching murderess shook us with horror. The pitiless shine of her black eyes transfixed us both – the last thing those poor mice had ever seen.

Basil stared with me, as transfixed with horror as was I.

It was seeing my friend helpless before a murderer that broke me from my own frozen state; I gave a squeal of rage and leapt at the approaching reptile, striking it a blow on the snout from my walking-stick.

The beast reared up, mouth open to bite – and was struck by another blow, this time from Basil’s stick. He too had freed himself from catatonia at the sight of his friend’s peril and now stood beside me. Without a word we parted from each other, keeping the serpent between us.

She hissed and coiled and rose again, only to be struck by one stick or the other from the last thing she’d expected to find. Her enraged, stupid reptile eyes swerved from one of us to the other, unable to comprehend fearless mice, and fled us into the dark room on the other side of the grating – and straight into the cane wielded by a shouting Sherlock Holmes, there to avenge the dead human.

The human monster who’d loosed a viper on his own daughter lumbered toward the grating just as the adder, fleeing her human assailant, fell upon him from above. A terrible shriek. We lay in our grating and watched the human stagger and convulse in his chair and die, the serpent still clinging to his neck like a speckled kerchief.

We let our human colleagues deal with the murderer’s corpse, suffocate the reptile in the safe and comfort the young woman, for Basil and I spent the rest of that night sleepless and shuddering, clinging to each other.

“I could have gotten us both killed.” The quaver in Basil’s voice betrayed his remorse. “Dawson, I owe you my life, my thanks and a profound apology.”

Fear, and something else, made my voice as tremulous as his. “If you’re going to get yourself killed, foolish creature, I’m getting killed with you.”

A cat-like snarl made us flinch for a moment, relax in relief, and then look at each other and start laughing. After our long night of hideous anticipation, it was a relief to hear the cheetah outside.


End file.
